Road to Redemption
by Thegunner18
Summary: Survival by any means necessary. Being part of a street gang in Ruskol, that's the phrase Luka Peraxis had to live by every single day. Often in life, though, it never remains that simple. Pulled into a terrifying conspiracy by the long thought dead ghosts of his past, Luka must learn to re-evaluate everything he once held as the truth.


**Road to Redemption – Chapter 1**

"I won't tell you again: this shipment gets to me tomorrow at 6am. Not. One. Minute. Later." Each word was spat out under a low, controlled voice, yet dripping with malice and venom all the same. "Am I clear?"

"Y-Ye-yeah! Sure!" The response ended up almost inaudible with a hand wrapped tightly around the young Dreamkeeper's neck, struggling to scrape the air into his lungs to put together the words. Brown eyes bulged, bloodshot. All of a sudden, the dingy room filled with the sound of gasping and coughing as his body crumpled unceremoniously to the wooden floor. Shards of recently formed ice shattered under his weight.

"Good. You know what'll happen if you screw this up." The aggressor's tone remained calm and collected. What little light the ice had been reflecting dimmed away into thin air. He left without another word, leaving the shaken up 'Keeper to his own devices. Only the creaking of rotted wooden planks under the strain of his boots accompanied the distressed sounds.

"Spirits, Luka, was that necessary? He's just a kid."

He had only just finished climbing the last of the stairs from the basement level, but Luka reacted quicker than he thought he ever could. Jewel-like turquoise eyes jolted into action towards the location of the voice. A voice he could never mistake for anything else. "Maxi, what the hell are you doing here?" He made sure to hush his voice to the point of almost complete silence. Throughout the whole meeting he had been on edge; It didn't show – until now. As devoid of life as the abandoned industrial area may have felt, it was easy to be deceived. Prying ears and eyes...A staple of Ruskol's underbelly. "You know how dangerous this could be. Besides, I need someone to keep things locked down back home."

Each of Luka's hands were planted firmly on Maxi's broad shoulders, dragging both of them into one of the many narrow, cobbled alleyways. Today had already been disastrous. He had come away empty-handed from the one thing that ensured his survival in this world; his first line of defence against the unrelenting clammy hands of death. If anything happened to his best friend, too? Well, it would break him.

"Hey, hey, hey...calm down bro. If it's so dangerous then you need someone to back your ass up." The slight twinge of a smile could be seen at the corner's of Maxi's lips. A part of Luka couldn't help but be infected by his never-faltering bright outlook despite everything they'd been through. Always smiling. Always joking. He just couldn't be angry with the guy. "And your hands are damn freezing...You gotta stop doing that, man." By this time, Maxi had eased himself out of Luka's grip, ruffling up the black and blue striped fur on his friend's forearms to get rid of the little specks of ice which had crystallised there.

"I can handle myself. You know me."

"Yeah, I do know you. And I also know that you got a knack for finding trouble. I guess some things Vex couldn't fix, eh?" He laughed under his breath, handing out a playful punch to the shoulder of the more diminutive 'Keeper. Luka frowned. Was there a hint of jealousy there? No - just Maxi being Maxi. He dismissed the idea as fast as it had formed.

With one last paranoid glance back over his shoulder Luka jerked his head to the side, silently beckoning Maxi to follow. Trouble would find _them_ if they stuck around too long, even if he did know Ruskol's streets like the back of his hand. Most of the streets anyway. There'd been some new construction going on which he wasn't too fond of. A hand swept through his messy, dark blue mohawk all the way down to the back of his head.

Huh.

Maxi was right about his hands. He hadn't even noticed.

The two friends walked side-by-side through the early hours of dawn, somewhat more at ease than they had been earlier. The talk was casual – sporadic at times – but they were sharing laughs, and truthfully that was what Luka needed right now. From the moment he'd stepped into school as a kid, Maxi's happy-go-lucky nature was like a magnet. Maxi was the positive, Luka the negative. That magnet hadn't lost any of its attractive force just yet. The lynx-esque 'Keeper glanced wearily up at the sky. The sun was only barely managing to clamber its way up above the horizon, showering Ruskol in a dull haze. A threatening haze. A haze that promised to be the last the two would ever see. But they rebelled against it, one day at a time. They were the authors of their own stories, and the epilogue was still far from their sights.

An eternity had passed before they had arrived back home, but the satisfying groan of the metal handle sent a wave of utter relief through Luka's body.

"Home, sweet home. With a side of law-breaking." Maxi leaned over-dramatically into Luka as he quietly murmured the last part, eliciting a small chuckle from him. On the outside it was perhaps as ordinary as a Ruskolian residence could be. A little more run-down, maybe. Black paint had flaked off the edges of the arch around the door as well as around parts of the windows revealing the raw, untreated wood underneath. The majority of the two-storey building comprised of well-refined stone, designed to withstand and even revel in Ruskol's harsh weather patterns, but even some of that had been chipped away fairly substantially over time. Perhaps it was a testament to the craftsmanship that it was still in decent condition after so long. Or perhaps it was a reminder of Ruskol's true nature: that even the most hardy and implacable things, be it living or inanimate, could be whittled down, altered, and broken into unrecognizability.

"At least you remembered to close those curtains before you decided to follow me." His low voice was much more obviously light-hearted now. He sighed deeply, dropping his whole weight carelessly onto one of the two couches they had set up in the living room. Both were angled around a data-scroll that they'd mounted up on the wall recently with a small coffee table in the middle of the room. Mostly they just enjoyed laughing at the newscasts and the propaganda crap that always blared through the speakers. A fireplace full of wood just begging to be used sat inside the back wall close to the data scroll as well as a couple of bookshelves full of an assortment of reading material. Chemistry-based books alone made up probably a quarter of it all. With good reason, though. Of course, all the other basic home amenities were there. It wasn't much, but it was home.

"Uhh...'follow'?" Maxi let the question hang, using his hands to air-quote. "Come on, don't make me look like a creep now! I prefer the phrase 'making sure you're not being shot to pieces by the CCA' because I know for a fact you wouldn't take the easy route out." Maxi's tone was enthusiastic, bombastic...charismatic. There wasn't a single thing he could do to make something sound boring, that was for sure.

Luka rolled his eyes, but it didn't stop his smile from appearing. "We've been doing this for two years now, mate. If the CCA were onto us I'd know by now."

"I don't know, man, they've been stepping it up. Probably because of the election coming up soon or something." Maxi leaned forward, elbows on the tops of his thighs. "You heard about that raid on those Neon Knives yesterday, right? They went _all-in_ on that. All-in."

"So, what, you think one of the Neons talks and it's eventually gonna work its way back up to us?"

"Not just the Neons. Anyone that might have used our stuff." Maxi shrugged and reached over to grab a bag of gummy sweets from atop the coffee table, tossing a couple into his mouth. "Making their powers more potent? As if they didn't get pissed off enough about power usage already." The words seemed to stick together because of the sweets, but Luka just about understood.

"Well if they don't come good on that shipment tomorrow morning then we won't have to worry about CCA, only the street dealers. Trust them to fuck the delivery up just as I'm on the verge of a breakthrough." A wry smile had now taken over. In many ways they were caught between a rock and a hard place, but at the same time they were the only ones they knew who made star sand – affectionately nicknamed 'sparkle' by many of its users for its striking similarity to the sparkling starfall mountain snows – so that was one safety net at least. The dealers knew this was their only source.

"Almost like someone thinks you're a dangerous son of a bitch with this stuff being in circulation. Dangerous enough that they'd want to stop you making it. Like the CCA..." Maxi trailed off, smirking, whilst tossing the packet of sweets over to Luka. A couple of them spilled out onto the floor before landing on his stomach. He'd clear up later. At some point.

"What's with the CCA obsession? It's almost like you're trying to distract me from the real threat." Luka playfully threw a pillow over at the large 'Keeper which landed slap-bang in the middle of his head. He quickly devoured a couple of gummies anticipating a return attack, but none came. Instead, Maxi sat there in uncharacteristic silence, a little flustered. "You ok?"

"Yeah...yeah I mean...I just got thinking about what would have happened to us if we never got into this kind of position. Y'know, being able to make a living from this."

"Then we'd have worked something out together, like always." Luka reassured his friend, shrugging lightly.

Despite being a fairly recent development, the drug Luka and Maxi had created was an almost overnight hit with the gangs around Ruskol and gradually took hold across Anduruna over the years. Taken nasally, the crystalline-like substance would almost immediately induce a strong mental high and heightened perception, including an increase in power strength of around 1.5 -2x. This would last for between 1-4 hours depending on the amount taken. It was addictive, that much Luka knew for sure when he had been testing its effects on himself. He had Maxi to thank for making sure he didn't end up a crazed addict, despite how much he felt the cravings during recovery periods.

Some lives were bound to get ruined in some way because of the drug. Of course it would happen. He accepted that fact a long time ago knowing he could live with it. Maybe that made him a terrible person. At the end of the day, though, he had to put his own survival first. It was a necessary evil, but with the money this was bringing in, he'd finally be able to make things right and atone for his past. Luka believed that every Dreamkeeper had the freedom to act however they wanted to and so they were responsible for those actions, whatever those actions might be. He carried the weight of responsibility for every action he took. Some of those he could never forgive himself for.

His train of thought was interrupted unexpectedly by a knock at the door. Both Maxi and Luka instinctively reached for the springer pistols they carried around with them.

Maxi peeked cautiously through the gap at the side of the black curtains, springer in hand. Luka half-expected him to be greeted by the springer barrels of a CCA squadron. Instead, the larger 'Keeper twisted his body around to face Luka. The last time he'd seen an expression like Maxi was wearing now was during one their end-of-year maths exams – and Maxi did not enjoy maths. Cogs in his head seemed to be grinding to a halt.

"Sonya is here?" The string of words bordered on both statement and question accompanied by a higher pitched voice. He didn't look entirely sure as to what he should have been feeling at that point.

"At six in the bloody morning? Did she accidentally muder someone again?" Luka smiled and shook his head in amusement, darting over to the front door to open it. Sonya glided gracefully through the gap as soon as it became big enough for her to fit through, glancing over her shoulder briefly. She wasted no time in getting to the point.

"It's Vex. Alive."

"What? No...I don't...Vex died. The shock troopers killed him. I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him that day." Luka's voice was shaky. This was the Vex who had taught him how to survive out here on the streets, how to make others respect you...fear you. Saying that the two were close was an understatement. Being an only child in his family, Luka had never appreciated what it meant to have someone like Vex in his life. Brothers.

"I know. We all saw his body but it's him, wings and all." Sonya used the brief confused silence to reach into a pocket on the inside of her coat and pull out a pristine black-tipped white feather. Luka's eyes lit up. There was no mistaking it. But...it couldn't be true. Vex would never leave them in the dark for so long. Luka, Sonya, Maxi – everyone else who was part of their street family – they all looked up to him as the rock in their lives. The one constant they could always fall back on. Then everything came crashing down. "He knew you'd react this way, so he had to prove it was actually himself."

"This-This could just be from any-" Before he could even finish speaking, Sonya lay yet another bombshell on him. In the Keeper's outstretched palm sat a golden, heart-shaped locket with a delicate chain snaked around it. The metal had been dulled slightly because of its age, but none of that mattered to Luka. What mattered was that Sonya had left the locket wide open, presenting to Luka two small, rounded pictures that fit perfectly on either side of the casing.

"Luka, is that-"

"-My parents..." Sombre of tone and distant of expression, Luka carefully picked the jewelry up by its chain allowing it to unravel out and leave the actual locket swinging innocently in space. The two pictures smiled warmly at him, as if inviting him in with them.

The locket was his mother's; a gift to her from his father. She would wear it every single day without fail. It was her one reminder of him after he passed away, more valuable than any other possession she had. Luka dreaded to think what the implications of the past few minutes were.

"So wait, how exactly did he get a hold this?" Maxi interjected, arms crossed. "Because this is honestly some freaky shit, and I don't think I like it anymore."

"Look, I know about as much as you two."

"Nothing?" Maxi scratched at the back of his head.

"Nothing." Sonya sighed. "He didn't say anything else after giving it to me, but was acting really weird. As if he was being followed by someone or something. He just gave it to me, told me to get it to you, then left as fast as he appeared." Her emerald eyes remained firmly fixed onto Luka's. They pierced right through his outer barriers, disintegrating that tough, calm exterior into nothing. She knew him too well. He was loathe to admit it, but Sonya could play him like a fiddle. "Now, are you gonna trust me, or am I gonna have to beat some sense into you?"

"Ehhh, I don't think she's joking, man..." Maxi eased himself back a step, keeping a wary eye on the tall femme fatale. "I don't know how you two ever-" Her icy gaze shot daggers at Maxi, stitching his mouth shut immediately.

"I trust you, Sonya. Now I need you two to trust me." He met each of their gazes one after another, his outer shell now rebuilt. Luka was well aware that he could have been walking into some kind of trap, but this was the only way to figure out what the hell was going on. "Hope you don't mind a bit of an early morning walk again."

And besides, with these two around what was the worst that could happen?


End file.
